by Shane Sody and Ann Clarke
We’ve offered to help Premier Malinauskas to capture the economic benefits of the LIV Golf tourism drawcard, while protecting trees and public access to your Adelaide Park Lands.
The Premier’s plans to chop trees, erect fences, and build over parts of Possum Park / Pirltawardli (Park 1 of your Adelaide Park Lands) have been characterised as “Pillaging Possum Park for FIFO millionaires.”
A social media campaign, using the hashtag #ProtectParksPete has been gaining traction in recent days.
Over coming weeks, we’ll be assisting the Premier by identifying alternative locations to build a new championship golf course and host the multi-million dollar annual LIV Golf tournament.
This is the first in what will be a series of options we’ll suggest to the Premier, so that he can protect your Park Lands, while still catering to the millionaire FIFOs of the LIV Golf circuit.
Anne Clarke has put forward the first of what will become several alternative options that we’ll be urging the Premier to consider.
Option 1: Dry Creek
by Ann Clarke
The Dry Creek salt pans lie on about 980 hectares of idle evaporation ponds on Adelaide’s northern shore. They offer everything LIV Golf needs without chopping a single tree or fencing off any of your Adelaide Park Lands.
A map of the Dry Creek salt field area earmarked for development. Pic: InDaily
Plenty of space
A full “Greg Norman scale” championship course, 350 metre practice range, golf development hub and tournament village would use less than 30 % of the Dry Creek site.
This site has previously been earmarked for up to 10,000 new homes. However, concerns have been expressed that its low elevation makes it unsuitable for housing, with fears of likely inundation in coming years from sea level rise and tidal inundation. However, that need not stop its development as a golf course.
Even with a full-scale golf course built there, hundreds of hectares would remain for new lawns, bike paths, kayak courses, bush trails and bird habitat that link straight into the adjacent International Bird Sanctuary.
Adelaide International Bird Sanctuary. Pic: https://www.discoversalisbury.com.au/
Fixing what’s broken
The salt pans sit on acid sulphate soils. Covering them with clean sand and re flooding the basins could bring back mangroves and samphire flats, store carbon and shield the coast from stronger storm surges. Studies show every dollar spent on such green repair returns about 65 cents in health savings within a year and pays for itself in 18 months.
Your health could become a priority
South Australia spends a fortune fighting heart disease, diabetes and depression. Open, inviting parks lift daily step counts, cut screen time and lower blood pressure. Add a coastal cycleway, public par 3 loop and free junior clinics and Dry Creek could become a health protection project as well as a golf venue.
Protecting Adelaide’s brand
Adelaide is famous for its ring of Open, Green, Public Park Lands. Culling century-old trees, and fencing off a large part of your Park Lands for months at a time risks tarnishing Adelaide’s image and reputation as a ‘National Park City’.
Moving the LIV Golf show to Dry Creek would keep this part of your Park Lands open all-year round, and would tell a better story: a derelict saltworks reborn as a climate smart sports and nature precinct.
A return on investment
Some of the Dry Creek land is privately owned, but could be resumed by the Government. Other adjacent land parcels are already owned by the State Government.
Roads and rail are next door. When you add environmental offsets and long term health gains, taxpayers could recoup the multi-million dollar build price over time, while still enjoying, every day the Open, Green Public Adelaide Park Lands in the heart of the city.
Find out more
Future stories in this series will focus on other alternative sites on which the State Government might build its desired new LIV Golf course, without trying to harm or diminish your Park Lands.
See our previously published stories on this issue and other relevant resources - including a letter from the Premier, and suggestions for activism, collected on this page:
